


all the birds are quiet here

by themorninglark



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Character Study, Dorothea and friends, Dorothea gen, Gen, mostly Academy-era with some pre-canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 16:54:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24320143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/themorninglark
Summary: She reaches to pull down her cap, just as she used to on the streets. A motion she still makes without thinking before she goes to face the world. But today, she pauses. Steals another glance at herself, then pushes her cap up again, meets her own gaze in dirty glass. She has not come all this way to hide her face, has she now?In which Dorothea finds a place for herself, and her song.
Relationships: Dorothea Arnault & Claude von Riegan, Dorothea Arnault & Edelgard von Hresvelg, Dorothea Arnault & Manuela Casagranda, Dorothea Arnault & Marianne von Edmund
Comments: 10
Kudos: 54





	all the birds are quiet here

**Author's Note:**

  * For [strikinglight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikinglight/gifts).



> This fic exists because my friend Meg once said she would like to see me write Dorothea, for various reasons, and the thought never quite left my mind once it lodged itself. So: this one's for you, Meg. I hope I did your girl justice ♥

_Dear God, it is years since I've prayed._  
_I understand the birds are holy._  
_I understand the body leads us to love, or_

_this is one way of knowing the world._

\- Stacie Cassarino, “Northwest”

_There’s only one bed_ , is what Dorothea had said to the young man who showed her to the dormitories, and he’d looked at her and repeated himself, slowly. Yes. This was her room. Had he not made himself clear? Dorothea looked into the room, found a snarl in the rug, charmingly imperfect, and covered her mouth and her laugh with one hand. _Of course. Very clear. Thank you—_

But he’d already started walking away, leaving Dorothea alone in this room that was, inexplicably, all hers. The sheets aren't what she'd call soft. There's an odd smudge on the mirror that she can't rub away with her sleeve no matter how she tries, and the rug has a bit of a musty smell, but it is hers. All hers! What a funny thought. Dorothea has not had so much space to herself since she made baths out of fountains. What to do with herself? To sing out loud, and hear only her mezzo-soprano echo off the walls. A solo in perpetuity. What shall she ever do without Liliana, or Carine, or Lys, or any of the girls she has roomed with over the years, to join their voices to her own?

She is on her knees on the floor now, opening the battered trunk she’d salvaged from the prop storage, and her fingers curl round the spine of her tattered songbook. This one goes on her nightstand. It doesn’t take long to unpack the rest of her things, what few things there are: a poster curling at the corners, dried roses, gilt-edged programme leaflets with her name in cursive gold across the front. A handful of costume jewellery. A lily-white silk scarf an elderly nobleman once gave her, a man who had been kind and called it a poor gift in return for her song, and asked nothing of her, not even a kiss. All her favourite dresses, though it seems she won’t have many occasions to wear them. At least the Academy uniform is cute.

Already, just walking down the courtyard with her head held high like she belongs here, Dorothea's seen some gorgeous fruit for the picking. The oranges are a handsome colour, hanging ripe and full from the trees. The plainest of little sparrows could land on a branch and the fruit would fall off just like that. They say the prince of Faerghus is very good-looking, and the new Alliance heir, he's a mystery, a charming one. There's even a princess of Brigid enrolling this year: _a hostage_ , goes the rumour in the city. Dorothea has never left Enbarr in her life. _Had_ never left Enbarr, till she came here to Garreg Mach. She must be brave, this princess of Brigid, and very strong. Dorothea's loyalty to Adrestia is not so strong that she'd say no to going across the sea.

And then there is Lady Edelgard, of course. Edelgard, who used to come to the opera with her father and sit up so very straight, the heavenly dome of the Mittelfrank ceiling arching high above her blond head, so she looked like a lonely angel always. She never used to blink, whenever Dorothea looked up and caught her eye mid-song.

Right at the bottom of her trunk, a little smushed, is her old brown cap. Dorothea shakes out the creases as best as she can, and jams it on her head. She stands up, goes over to the mirror and picks up her favourite earrings, the teardrop gold ones inset with peridot, then hesitates and puts them down again. _The red ones._ She should wear the red ones, for today and for the Black Eagles, even though garnet does not go so well with her complexion. It wouldn’t hurt to make a show of belonging, on her first day here. Von Vestra, von Aegir—she knows these names, knows the sort of people they are.

Dorothea fixes her earrings and studies her reflection. Blush on her cheeks. Pink lips, a smile just this side of harmless. Hair tumbling round her shoulders in light waves. She had not had time to straighten it before she left Enbarr this morning, but it is just as well, this natural look, for Dorothea the student. Dorothea the ordinary girl.

She reaches to pull down her cap, just as she used to on the streets. A motion she still makes without thinking before she goes to face the world. But today, she pauses. Steals another glance at herself, then pushes her cap up again, meets her own gaze in dirty glass. She has not come all this way to hide her face, has she now?

* * *

In the wake of their first mock battle, Edelgard sharpens her sword. This is how Dorothea stumbles upon her, by the scraping in the Black Eagles common room. Whetstone on iron. _Scrape. Scrape._ A sound like a sore throat on stage.

“Hello, Dorothea,” says Edelgard, without pausing.

She has a bloodstain on her cheek. She does not seem to notice she has a bloodstain on her cheek. It is drying now, and the gash underneath shows, an uneven seam holding Edelgard’s expression together, pale skin and bones and cold fire. What a princess, so ready to die. In something as trivial as a mock battle, no less.

“Are you injured?” Dorothea asks.

When Edelgard looks at her blankly, Dorothea takes out her small pocket mirror and holds it out to her. For a moment, Edelgard stares at her reflection as though it were another enemy. One to be broken, one to be dashed to the ground. Edelgard reaches for the mirror, and Dorothea holds on to it tight, for the lid is inlaid with oyster-shells and she rather likes this one, but Edelgard’s touch is cursory and she merely tips the glass closer to her.

“I suppose I am. But don’t fuss.”

Dorothea snaps her mirror shut. “Oh, Edie.”

She bends down to touch Edelgard’s wound. Edelgard’s breath hitches as she stiffens, starts to flinch away, but Dorothea’s fingertips press firm. Edelgard can be so silly. Have they not spent weeks together, now? Have they not learned and fought and bled together? All it takes is performing one show, for a company to feel like family, at least if your heart is in it. Dorothea has seen and sung the shape of so many hearts, it isn’t always easy for her, looking for where her own beats. The reality of it, the sheer reality! How naked it makes her feel. But with Edelgard, and Petra and Bernadetta—sweet, shy Bernadetta—Dorothea is seized, so often, with the desire to press her hands to theirs and lace their fingers together so they can always find her, to say: let the world come for them, cruel as it is.

 _While I am here,_ Edelgard had said to them all, _I am just a student, like all of you. Do not give me special treatment._ So Dorothea slides her arm through Edelgard’s sometimes, takes her by the hand sometimes and pulls her towards gazebos and tea parties, says, _Edie, come to the sauna with me_ , and of course she would never do things like that in the capital—at least not with Hubert glaring all the time—but what are they, here, if not two girls who could use a friend?

“Have you been training in healing?” Edelgard asks, as Dorothea breathes out.

“Well, it’s terribly unfair that you get to be good at the sword and the axe, and I only get to make fire and lightning, don’t you think? I’m not the sort of girl who likes putting all her gemstones in one locket.”

“But aren't you bad at white magic?”

Dorothea laughs. How refreshing it is, to be told so bluntly that she is bad at something, from someone who wants nothing from her. And so truthfully, too. Edelgard is good at that, and it matters in ways she will never know. Dorothea will never forget her first night at the opera, where Manuela knelt beside her on the floorboards in a messy room, said, _I’m sorry my dear, this won’t be comfortable. But if I don’t do it, you will never get to be on stage._

Dorothea tipped her chin up. _Do it, then,_ and Manuela cupped her face in her hands and kissed her on the forehead. Such an awkward age Dorothea had been then, the age of knobbly knees and sharp elbows and scabs and bruises, bruises and scabs, fading away one by one as Manuela worked her magic. It is no great loss to Dorothea. Just becase she doesn’t wear her scars on her skin any more does not mean they are gone. But oh, Manuela was right, as she always was.

So Dorothea knows: it hurts, to be healed. Yet through the pain of her skin knotting itself back together, Edelgard looks up at Dorothea as she always does, clear-eyed and honest.

“I’ll never be as good as Lin,” Dorothea admits. “But I’ll do in a pinch, if he should faint on the battlefield. Although—don’t tell him I said this!—he’s stronger than he knows.”

Edelgard smiles. “So are you. And I will tell it to you.”

* * *

Tonight, the curtains were blue. It is an Affair always, the kind with a _capital A_ , when they change the curtains and send the old season’s out for cleaning. The Red Wolf Moon marks the beginning of new songs and stories, of longer nights and fur coats that tickle her chin. Dorothea likes the winter. She likes all the fabrics she can wear, velour and fleece, likes to wrap herself in gloves and mufflers and hems that go down to her ankles. More clothes than she has ever worn before. How grand she looks, and at night, when she takes all the layers off one by one till she stands before her mirror in nothing but her slip, how it feels like settling back into herself.

These long nights are the best for studying, when the sky is a contralto colour and, when she’s lucky, she’ll look up to catch a flurry of snow, gone as quickly as it started. Everyone who wakes in the morning will only see the slush on the ground. For Dorothea, snowflakes come to rest on the windowsill, like they used to on her tongue.

She hugs herself tight and warm, yawns and turns another page. She will always be able to read a libretto better than any of these books, but if singing was not enough for Manuela, it cannot be enough for Dorothea either. She cannot let it be. Against the velvet dark outside, Dorothea holds out her hand, palm up. The lightning sparks. It comes more easily, now. She will have to give the performance of her life, at the entrance tests; she can do that much, at least. Who would she be, if she did not know all about performing?

Liliana is sleeping and Dorothea cannot go wild with the lightning. She lets it die out, for now. From the hair’s-breadth gap in their windows, a wind curls in, blows out her light. Dorothea makes a fist and brings it close to her candle. When she opens her hand, fire dances between her knuckles.

* * *

Petra has been teaching Claude how to climb trees. Her voice is full of mirth when she speaks of it, and it makes Dorothea’s heart leap and soar, to hear Petra laugh like that, so they speak of it a lot and bend their heads together at mealtimes and in between classes, and that is how Dorothea knows Claude has fallen out of a tree when he walks into the infirmary. There is a scrape on his elbow, a tear in his sleeve, and his arm is sticking out funny. Most of all, there are twigs and leaves in his hair.

“Don’t ask—”

“He’s fallen out of a tree,” says Dorothea.

Claude groans. Dorothea smiles. “I didn’t ask.”

Claude slumps down into a chair, rolls up his torn sleeve and holds his arm out to Manuela. “I think I broke something. And what about you, Dorothea? What limbs have you dislocated lately, to be here on this beautiful Sunday?”

He does not need to ask this. Surely Claude has heard all the gossip about her and where she came from. Surely he can see Dorothea is in the pink of health, spot the half-full teacups on Manuela’s side table and the plate of pastry crumbs, and draw his own conclusions. Claude is many things. Unobservant is not one of them.

Still, he waits, and it is no impoliteness, Dorothea permits, that he has asked. That he has asked at all and wants to hear what she has to say. That is something. And Petra likes him well. That is also something. Dorothea could laugh it off, say, well, there is no part of her that is not _dislocated_ in some way, say, Claude is one to speak. But as she meets Claude’s open gaze with her own, she finds it is not unkind, and it is the simple truth that comes to her lips.

“I’m just having tea with Manuela. And cakes. Did you know, the saghert and cream here is nearly as exquisite as you would enjoy at the opera?”

“How delightful. I’ve never been to the opera, I’m sad to say.”

Dorothea’s eyebrows rise. Before meeting Claude, she would not have known what to make, of a noble who did not know the opera; but before meeting Claude, she would not have known a noble like him existed in Fódlan at all. The time was awfully short, it’s true, between his sudden elevation to Alliance heir and the beginning of their time here, and Duke Riegan presumably had more practical things to do than take Claude to the opera. A strange boy, this one, springing out of the wilderness itself to surprise them all. Sometimes, when she glimpses the way Claude ducks behind cover with his bow, Dorothea cannot help imagining he must have spent time in places that were not safe, come to know the kiss of fight-or-flight as intimately as she got used to the lights in her eyes.

“You must come, then. One day,” says Dorothea. She smiles. “And I will show you the secret entrances. That’s the best part. There are so many, in that great old building.”

Claude claps his free hand to his heart. “I _love_ secrets. It’s a deal.”

“Stop fidgeting,” Manuela mutters, and takes a swipe at the dirt on Claude’s face with a washcloth. He scrunches his eyes shut and winces. He is making such a grimace, so completely unlike Edelgard when she’s getting patched up, that Dorothea very nearly lets out an undignified giggle. Manuela ignores all of his grumbling and the yowl he makes when she sets his bones straight.

“I’ll leave you to the little dukeling, Manuela,” says Dorothea, as she stands and tidies the tea things.

“Dorothea, you would not be so cruel as to leave me to the mercy of Professor Manuela all alone—”

Dorothea balances the tea tray on one hand and flutters her fingers at Claude with the other. His chagrined frown slides off his face as easily as it came, and he grins, and that is the last Dorothea sees of him, on this _beautiful Sunday_. There will come a day, perhaps, when they will look each other in the eye, lost in a dusty passageway somewhere in the city and she will say, _we are not so different, you and I_ , and Claude will agree; there could have been a day like that, in the past.

Now, she will go to tell Petra of this latest escapade and they will laugh until their sides hurt.

* * *

When the dancing is over, when wine and song have been spilled in equal measure, the sun comes up. It always comes up. Dorothea does not usually rise with it, but there were times, in Enbarr, when the hours would pass as a dream, the evening a string of waltzes that never seemed to end, and the sky would be drunk with light before she went to bed. Tonight, she has not slept at all. Her feet keep moving, even as she closes her door behind her and twirls across the floor, lets her hands come to rest on the windowsill.

A winter-pink morning. Clouds like rose quartz. If she could wear those clouds like jewels, what a cloak the sky would make round her shoulders. She would be celestial, beyond the simple perceivings of all the simpler men about her. If only dancing were enough, her pretty feet and her soft hands in the hands of others; she would have no need of the pile of books on her bedstand and the broken quill pens, all the papers she has singed from magic that got away from her. But now that Dorothea has stopped to catch her breath, her ankle twinges. She twists it one way, then the other, and sits down with a sigh.

Dorothea is not so naive as to think she will ever be a scholar, like Linhardt, a warrior, like Petra, a teacher, like Manuela. Neither is she just the songstress she used to be. But perhaps none of it has been a waste, her time here, and her time in the opera; when there is a ball, she can still stand bathed in the glow of a chandelier and make everyone forget, for a while, that they are hurting. That skill, at least, she has not lost. It shimmers in her like a whole other kind of magic. Here, away from a stage she once called home, that she does not miss and yet misses more than she can say, it is up to her to make it count. In the face of unseen enemies and darkening days, Dorothea will make it count more than ever.

The sun comes up, and it will go down again. Dawn after dusk after dawn. And she, she will endure.

* * *

Here she is, such a ghost to make the very stone of the monastery go soft around its weathered edges, to make the wind itself sigh. Dorothea hears it, all around them outside. Beyond these walls a storm rages, but within the cathedral it is a choral crescendo that lingers, sweetly as it does in Dorothea’s throat, and when the thunder rends the sky with a mighty clap and Marianne startles with a small cry, Dorothea rushes to take her hands and say—well, nothing at all, for now.

Holding Marianne’s hands is like clasping a statue’s. Folded in prayer, unmoving, carved out of silence. But as these hands start to tremble in her own, ever so feather-light, Dorothea’s breath comes back to her body.

“Dorothea,” says Marianne, in a voice so gentle Dorothea’s heart will break.

“I’m sorry I startled you,” says Dorothea. “Are you all right?”

Marianne dips her head down. “Yes. The thunder—it was sudden. But I am all right. You do not need to be here with me.”

Dorothea smiles. She does not let go of Marianne. They stand like this, entwined in an echoing evensong at the foot of Saint Ceathleann’s broken statue, and Dorothea raises Marianne’s hands to her own heart. “Your hands are warm, Marianne. I find them a comfort.”

Marianne’s eyes widen. Dorothea squeezes her hands tighter, finds they are stronger than they look, and she is not surprised. Marianne will not shatter at a touch like hers. _I have wanted to do this for a long time._ She is bursting to say it, for she sees it in Marianne, glimpses of the same fear that haunts her. Shadow-selves they cannot escape, always one step behind, if not in front. Two shadows do not make a light. But what a life beats within these hands, what a fierce hope Dorothea can hang on to, even in the darkness.

“Will you pray, Marianne?” Dorothea asks. “Will you pray, for someone like me?”

Marianne shakes her head, then stops abruptly. She is not looking down now. Her lovely face is tilted up, and she is meeting Dorothea’s gaze. There it is, that look Dorothea has seen in the battlefield when Marianne is astride Dorte, riding into the fray to heal her friends. She never looks back.

“You ask this as if it were a burden, Dorothea. As if someone like you were not worthy of prayer! When it should be I, who—”

Dorothea smiles, leans forward and presses her forehead soft against Marianne’s, closes her eyes. “Oh, dear Marianne. Together, then. We’ll do it together.”

* * *

After the rain, Dorothea walks out to the courtyard. The ceiling is made of stars, such an infinite ceiling, brighter still without the lights of the city. All the birds are quiet here. There was a time she might have thought she’d stolen their voices, thought she had nothing of her own. Her ribs are a cage that guard her heart. But the spaces, the spaces between them! Her lungs, swelling with air, all the music that lives within her, they are slipping out from the bars, they will not be contained. One day, wingtip to wingtip with everyone she loves, she will fly circles round the monastery’s spires. The ceiling is made of stars and the ground, their light. Dorothea takes her shoes off, one and then the other, lets them dangle in her hand as she walks, bare of foot. This much is hallowed, and also real: the puddles on stone, the water round her ankles. The hymn in her throat. Dorothea opens her mouth, and begins to sing.

**Author's Note:**

> fun(?) fact: did you know Dorothea and Marianne both list themselves among their dislikes in their character roster cards?
> 
> thank you for reading and showing Dorothea some love. she is amazing.
> 
> find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/lightveils)


End file.
